The Protagonist: EX-1

I went into The Protagonist: EX-1 with a spreadsheet mindset and came out with a mixed ledger. On paper, the system design reads promisingly: initiative-based turn order where each character's speed determines their slot in the queue, a dedicated melee combo chain called MACS that lets you sequence light and heavy strikes for better outcomes, a hacking skill that can temporarily subvert enemy drones to your side, scrap-driven crafting that feeds into more than 19 weapon types, and a squad size gated by Angel's leadership stat. That is a legitimate set of interlocking knobs for a tactics player to turn. The problem is that those knobs are mounted on a machine that keeps jamming. The squad itself is the game's most interesting hook. You build a party of up to six, mixing mandatory main characters like the knife-specialist Radical and healer Bypass with optional secondary recruits whose class you sometimes pick yourself. Everyone levels together, which removes the classic XCOM trap of stat-starved bench players, but it also flattens the sense of individual progression. Buddy, the experimentally enhanced dog who acts as a support unit, is probably the most memorable team member for all the right reasons. Character customization, distributing stat and skill points on level-up, equipping gear you crafted from blueprints and scrap, is the genuine bright spot here, and players who like min-maxing builds will find enough surface area to stay occupied for a while. Where the game starts to lose the plot is everywhere outside the build screen. The alien space station is the sole environment for the entire runtime, and the rooms bleed into each other with exhausting visual similarity. Switch puzzles break up combat but most reviewers, and I have to agree with the consensus, found them slow and repetitive rather than clever. The RNG in combat sits on the wrong side of the fairness line: losing a fight and replaying the same encounter with no strategy change can produce a completely different outcome, which is less "tactical depth" and more "slot machine." The tutorial front-loads walls of text with no option to revisit them, which is a legitimate design failure for anyone who wants to understand crafting before they need it. UI clutter makes managing squad equipment feel like filing taxes. The production values are higher than you might expect from a first-time indie studio. Built on Unreal Engine, the visuals punch above the price point and the voice cast includes some recognizable names. The sci-fi conspiracy story, synthetic aliens, a secretive council ruling Terra, moral choices about whether the KL-T invaders are actually hostile, sets up questions that genre fans will want answered. Multiple endings are listed in the Steam tags, which suggests the dialogue choices carry some weight. Whether the story sticks the landing depends heavily on your tolerance for the journey to get there. For a tactics-first buyer, the honest recommendation is cautious. The mechanical skeleton is more ambitious than most budget-tier turn-based titles, and someone who enjoys poking at build variety will find real content in the skill trees and crafting. But the AI, the level design monotony, and the clunky UI all push back hard against that potential. Steam sits at roughly 47% positive across a small sample, which tracks with a game that divides players cleanly along the lines of "I can see what they were going for" versus "this needed another year in the oven." No mod ecosystem to speak of, no community patches, no second chance from a studio that appears to have gone quiet post-launch. What you see at release is what you get.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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